Jessy (@susanliu33), Golden Finance

Recently, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on X that Coinbase is actively exploring the possibility of tokenizing the company's stock. It is reported that Coinbase has conducted preliminary communication with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and is studying how to shareholding stocks in tokenized stocks enjoy the same interests as traditional stock holders.

Coinbase's move has once again made Real World Assets (RWA) a hot topic in the crypto market. According to data from RWA.xyz, as of March 2025, excluding stablecoins, the overall market value of RWA products around the world has reached US$17.93 billion.

According to research by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the market size of the RWA track is expected to reach US$16 trillion by 2030, far exceeding the total market value of the entire crypto market.

In addition to stablecoins, in the current RWA track, private credit has the largest market value, US Treasury bonds rank second, while stocks have only a trivial market value. This may be because stock tokenization has been developing slowly because it involves more complex dividend calculations and distribution, as well as regulatory issues.

Now, the trend of compliance of crypto assets is becoming increasingly obvious, especially since Trump took office, the United States has rapidly promoted the development of crypto compliance. Against this background, Coinbase, the world's first cryptocurrency exchange listed on Nasdaq, takes the initiative to explore the combination of traditional finance and crypto innovation based on its own stocks. If successful, it will definitely bring a great demonstration effect.

At the same time, there are many problems that need to be solved in this process, including supervision, blockchain technology, the internal structure of the company behind the stocks involved, etc. A more important problem is that if the problem of equal rights of currency stocks is not solved, stock tokenization seems to be always a pseudo demand.

Encryption accelerates compliance, US bonds are on the chain, and stocks are being re-promoted

Traditional finance's enthusiasm for encryption is increasing year by year. Financial giants such as BlackRock, Fidelity, and JPMorgan Chase have successively launched crypto asset-related products. Especially the launch of US Treasury bonds has become the most popular segment of the RWA track in the past two years.

The popularity of treasury bonds on the chain is due to the macro economy this year. Since 2022, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates several times in a row to curb high inflation rates, resulting in tightening of global liquidity. In a high interest rate environment, investors' risk appetite is reduced, and traditional financial markets are impacted, resulting in capital being more inclined to flow into low-risk, high-yield asset classes. This prompted investors to start paying attention to government bonds, gold, real estate and other fundsThe tokenization of these assets happens to become an important growth point in the RWA track.

Although stocks have been tried for a long time, they do not have much voice in the popularity of the RWA track. Previously, exchanges such as FTX and Binance have launched trading services and related products for tokenizing US stocks, but the practice time has been short. For example, in 2021, within a few weeks of Binance's launch of stock tokens, financial regulators in the UK and Germany successively warned these products that may violate securities regulations. In less than three months, Binance announced the removal of all stock tokens.

From this point of view, compliance is the biggest problem facing stock tokenization. Coinbase's plan to tokenize stocks this time was made against the background that the United States' regulation of encryption will gradually become clear after Trump took office. This may avoid the biggest thunder that predecessors touched in the practice of stock tokenization.

As the largest compliant exchange in the industry, Coinbase's entry into the market and tokenizing its stock will also bring more benefits to itself. First of all, stock tokenization will attract more traditional financial investors to enter the crypto field, and at the same time provide existing crypto investors with new channels to access traditional financial assets. For its direct Base chain, this will also greatly enhance its value and ecosystem development.

For traditional financial markets, stock tokenization can significantly improve transaction settlement efficiency. It will also lower the threshold for retail investors to participate. On the other hand, tokenized stocks can become the underlying assets of various innovative financial products, such as automatic dividend distribution based on smart contracts, real-time equity registration, etc., greatly expanding the functional boundaries of traditional securities.

For the crypto industry, the tokenization of stocks by well-known listed companies will promote the entire crypto industry to accelerate the compliance process and establish a more mature regulatory framework and industry standards. Stock tokenization will attract a large amount of traditional financial capital to enter the crypto market and improve the overall liquidity of the industry. Stocks are also provided with a high-value, large-scale application scenario for blockchain technology. In order to support the tokenization of stocks and to support the tokenization of stocks, the crypto ecosystem will develop more complete services such as custody, settlement, and risk management, which will also enhance the professionalization and maturity of the entire industry.

However, in the specific practice of stock opening, although supervision is gradually becoming clear, there are many new situations that supervision needs to adapt to. The traditional financial regulatory framework needs to be adjusted to adapt to the new situations brought about by stock tokenization, such as the increase in cross-border transactions, 7*24 all-weather transactions, etc.

If coins cannot share the same rights, stock tokenization will not be of great significance

Stock tokenization is not a new thing. Although it has been practiced for a long time, the market has always been very small. According to data from rwa.xyz, the current market value of stocks on the chain is only US$14.51 million, while excluding stablecoins, the overall market value of RWA products is US$17.93 billion.

For stock investors, if these on-chain stocks cannot achieve more convenient and fast trading than off-chain stocks and can reach them, then why buy on-chain stocks? A more realistic reason is that it is difficult for holders of stocks on these chains to enjoy the same power as those of physical stock holders.

At present, there are no detailed details that disclose what kind of plan Coinbase will use to tokenize stocks, but the on-chain version of its stock has been available for a long time, but it is not officially launched. On March 8, Backed, a real asset tokenization issuer, announced on the X platform that it has launched tokenized Coinbase stock wbCOIN on the Base network. Users can redeemed through CoWSwap, and liquidity comes from Aerodrome.

According to the relevant documents of the product disclosed on its official website, it can be seen that the product was launched as early as 2022 and was deployed on Ethereum at that time. The product was approved by the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) on May 9, 2022 and approved by the Swiss BX Swiss AG on May 23, 2022. However, according to its official news, investors in the tokenized stock cannot receive the same dividend dividend as those of Coinbase stock holders.

According to Coingecko data, the token's trading volume in the past 24 hours is only $114. It can be seen that this token product is not recognized by the market.

For investors who hold stock tokenization, their most concerned issue is the issue of "equal rights of currency and stocks".

"Coin shares equal rights" means that tokenized stocks have completely consistent interests with traditional stocks, including all shareholder rights such as voting rights, dividend rights, and right to know. In particular, it not only includes the sameness of economic rights and interests, but also the complete equality of governance rights and interests. Token holders should be able to participate in shareholders' meeting voting, receive company notifications, and review relevant documents like traditional shareholders.

If the problem of equal rights of currency stocks is not solved, the value of tokenized stocks will be greatly damaged, and it will even be disconnected from the traditional stock prices. Backed's on-chain Coinbase stock product does not seem to be equal to currency stocks, which is also the main reason for its extremely low real trading volume.

The biggest difficulty in achieving equal rights of currency shares is still the legal issue. Most corporate laws do not clearly recognize the shareholder identity of token holders. In terms of regulation, global trading of tokenized stocks increases the difficulty of regulatory coordination. At the technical level, how to achieve the connection between the blockchain system and the traditional shareholder registration and voting system, and the structure of corporate governance also need to be changed based on it.

The entry of Coinbase is undoubtedly a good thing for the promotion of equal rights of coin stocks. If large institutions have more rules together with regulationThe right to speak. We hope that the same rights of currency stocks will be realized under the clarification of supervision. Only then will the monetized stocks in the era give full play to the advantages of blockchain technology itself compared to traditional stocks.